NOM Chairman: End Of Prop 8 Could Mean Same Fate For Other Voter Initiatives

"Imagine a hypothetical whose possibility is now very real in light of Roberts' decision. Gov. Jerry Brown has recently expressed his renewed opposition to Proposition 13, the tax limitation initiative (during his last stint as governor in the 1970s, Brown opposed Proposition 13). Suppose the governor were now to enlist an ally to sue him, challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 13 on federal equal protection grounds. Now suppose that neither he nor the attorney general puts up a defense to the legal challenge, resulting in a federal court order by a friendly judge that Proposition 13 was unconstitutional.

"And suppose further that, as happened in the Proposition 8 case, the governor and the attorney general, as part of their scheme and in further dereliction of their duty to defend the people's will, refuse to file an appeal. Poof, Proposition 13 would be no more. The Supreme Court has repeatedly warned of the lawless manipulation of the judicial process that might result from such collusive suits, yet that is what we are left with in the wake of the ruling in the Proposition 8 case." - NOM chairman John Eastman, in a Sacramento Bee piece co-authored by former US Attorney General Edwin Meese.

RELATED: Meese resigned as Attorney General in 1988 after being charged with complicity in the Wedtech scandal, which involved payoffs to members of Congress in return for military contracts. Meese had been a lobbyist for Wedtech before being appointed by Reagan. He then joined the board of the anti-gay Heritage Foundation, where he remains today.